Roadside

Roadside -
The World from a Wildflower's Point of View

The camera has dropped to ground level, and suddenly everything changes. A country road recedes into the distance, ordinary and purposeful. But in the foreground, the verge has become a universe.

Thistles and wildflowers rise against a luminous summer sky, their forms layered and multiplied until they shimmer with an almost hallucinatory intensity. Seed heads burst like small explosions of white light. Orange flares at the base of stems. Pink and magenta bloom and blur into the blue above. The clouds to the right have taken on colour and weight, tinged with violet, pressing into the composition from the edge.

The road belongs to speed and destination. The flowers belong to staying. This image insists on the latter – on the extravagant, overlooked life that thrives at the margins of every journey.

We drive past this every day without stopping. The image stops for us.